


A Candlelit Inferno

by FyrMaiden



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not warned for but worth mentioning: Jack and Parse waiver between 16 and 26, Overdose (as canon), Underage Substance Use, referenced Jack/Bitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 20:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8027860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: Much like everything else in his life, Jack’s understanding of his sexuality happens in stages. There’s no moment of sudden clarity, no bright flash that signals illumination. It’s more like flashes of colour in the darkness. Mostly, there’s just Kent.





	A Candlelit Inferno

**Author's Note:**

> Less of a story and more of a character study as I try to work out _my_ understanding of who Jack is.
> 
>  _Check, Please!_ , of course, does not remotely belong to me, but to Ngozi. It's a charming ball park to play in, however.

It’s not that Jack doesn’t believe in labels that prevents him from finding (or knowing, perhaps) his words for so long. It’s more that, with his last name and his crippling insecurity and the spotlight that’s been centred on him since he was a fat, awkward kid (and probably even before that, when he was the weirdly ugly baby of two incredibly attractive parents), he’s learned to be very wary of what he types into Google. So he never really learns the _words_ , he only knows that there was Parse - Kenny - who was always there, with his winsome smile and the confidence to go after what he wanted, and he’d wanted Jack.

And Jack, who didn’t know the words specifically, but did know that wanting Kent in return could spell disaster, even at 16. Knew it could be a disaster for both of them, if anyone else knew. He didn’t know his words, but he understood that the things they told each other, side by side, texting each other the things they couldn’t say out loud, couldn’t risk being overheard, were, perhaps, not entirely straight.

Sixteen year old Jack Zimmermann did not know he was gay, not explicitly. He only knew there was Kent, and that - maybe - there would always be Kent, and that they could, maybe, do this forever.

Twenty-six year old Jack Zimmermann isn’t any more certain of what the words are, or even how many there could be. Four years of listening to Shitty rant, first from across the hall in their dorm and then from the other side of his bed when he’s trying to study, have left him aware that gender is a social construct and attraction is just as fluid (or something, he couldn’t repeat it if he tried). He’s still pretty certain he prefers dick, he’d like it if Shitty would wear underpants if he’s going to sit on his bed like that, and that his words are probably demisexual and homoromantic. Or he’s just gay. Because there’s only really been Camilla, and that was only twice, and - and she was nice enough, but he’d never felt the overwhelming drive to bury his face between her thighs like he had with Kent when they were kids. 

Like he does with Bittle, when he has the chance, which is less than he would like because lining up their schedules now they’re not on the same team and living under the same roof is harder. 

(Jack allows himself a private smile. ‘Not on the same team.’ That’s funny, right? They’re finally on the same page, and now they’re playing for different teams. Euphemistically ironic.)

***

“I’m not gay,” Jack says, and Kent looks up at him from between his legs, his fingers long and already strong against the soft (but strengthening) muscles of Jack’s abdomen. Kent has that look on his face, and Jack feels his face heat. He’s not - He’s confused. He’s confused a lot of the time, if he’s honest. The world moves too fast around him, and there’s Kenny, who’s always (or it feels like always already) been the stable part of it. Kent, who makes the world make sense just by existing. Kent, whose blond hair Jack likes to touch, to bury his fingers in, and whose mouth he likes to kiss, whose mouth feels good against his, against his skin. Whose presence makes it easier to breathe in that way he used to rely on his mom for, back before he’d moved out to play in the Q.

“You just like me?” Kent says, and Jack rolls his eyes.

“Right now, no,” he says, but his eyes are closed and his brain is relaxed, and the words come out a little more French than they usually do around the harder New York of Kent’s accent. He feels the curl of Kent’s mouth against his throat, and shoves at his shoulder as he arches into it. 

And he knows that he wants this, and that he loves this, and he thinks, maybe, he loves Kent, though he doesn’t know how that should feel or how it looks, and he knows that he’s probably less straight than majority of the boys they play with, and that most of them would treat him differently if they saw him like this, and he tells himself again that he’s _not_ gay. It’s not, not if it’s just Kent.

***

It’s not just Kent.

It’s only Kent who sees him naked outside of the showers and the locker room, and it’s just Kent who he whispers his secrets to. They’re lonely, so far from home. Though Jack’s closer, and Kent’s got a lot of bravado. They’re always on the wrong side of lonely and the wrong side of (really fucking) drunk when it happens. Kent says they can blame it on the alcohol, and Jack laughs but it’s humourless and besides, the older he is (he’s almost 18, he’ll be 18 on his next birthday) the more he knows, in his heart, that he’s absolutely definitely gay. He’s more gay than not, anyway. There are girls he likes, that he thinks are nice, but none of them are Kent. None of them would understand.

And it’s not _just_ Kent. There are a few boys he’s seen that he’s drawn to. He doesn’t want them, not in the visceral, consuming way he feels about Kennny, but there _are_ boys. Compact, small, blond. Kent watches him watching and plies him with another beer, which mixes so abysmally with his medication that it makes his head swim and his stomach roll.

“Not gay,” Kent reminds him, and knocks against his shoulder. Jack doesn’t respond, only looks at his hands curled around his beer can.

“No one can know,” he says, and Kent makes a noise. “Kenny,” Jack says, and he can’t keep the pleading edge from his voice. He can feel his hands shaking, and he knows Kent can see, because suddenly he’s in Kent’s arms and this is fine, it’s okay. Everyone knows about _this_ , just - not everything else. Never everything else.

“It’s not like I’m planning to rent a billboard,” Kent says softly, and Jack understands when Kent is serious, because his eyes look grey and his voice changes. So he nods and forces a smile, and Kent ruffles his hair.

“C’mon, kiddo,” he says, because there’s a month between them. “Time to head home.”

***

He’s scared.

He’s scared of a lot of things, really. He’s scared of the feeling that grows in his chest when he’s with Kent, and he’s scared of the future, and he’s scared of his last name and what it means, and he’s _really_ scared that he’ll disappoint his dad and his mom, or that he already has, or - 

He’s scared a lot. And terror becomes overwhelming panic that flits around, buzzing across his skin and scrambling his brain like it’s made primarily of wasps, so much white noise that he can’t see or think or breathe, and - 

And on the ice, none of it matters. When he’s laced into his pads, with his uniform on, he can breathe again.

And when Kent offers him a drink and then to blow him, it makes sense to say yes to both.

He’s scared.

He’s scared of people finding out what he and Kenny do to one another when the lights are off, when they’re on the road and it’s just the two of them in a dark hotel room, all hands and mouths and hot hot heat.

He’s not ashamed, but he is terrified.

(And the pills help. They really help. So he just - takes more. Because that’s how it works, right? They stop his hands from shaking, stop his brain from buzzing. Stop those fucking ants from walking across his skin with their fire prick feet. He takes more pills, and drinks more, and he _doesn’t_ think about the draft and what that means -)

Jack’s scared a lot of the time, and most of his life has been about pushing past that. 

Being gay isn’t something he can push past. It’s not something he really _wants_ to push past. He shouldn’t have to. He’s been gay the whole time he’s played in the Q (for all the braggadocio to the contrary, it’s been Kent since they were 16 and the internet says everything after the third time is a kink and Kent might or might not be a kink but two years is definitely more than an accident so, yeah, he’s probably gay, definitely probably). But what he wants and what’s realistic aren’t natural bunkmates, and he’s going into the draft, and he knows that both of them are _good_ and - and he’s _gay._ He’s going into the NHL with his name and his dad’s legend and this sword of Damocles dangling over him.

There are lot of reasons why what happens happens, and many of them he will talk about, with his parents and with his therapist and not with Kent, whom he probably should talk to. And it’s not about _throwing it away_ , just. He wants to be able to breathe and the shaking won’t stop and Kent’s not there to to keep his limbs from floating away is four separate directions.

Really, he doesn’t even know it happens.

***

He can’t talk to Kent when it’s over, when it all comes right. Kent is in Nevada. Kent is in Las Vegas. Jack types his name into Google and reads all of the things he once would have chirped Kent about. He turns his phone over and over in his hands, types several texts that he doesn’t send, and curls in on himself in the bed he hasn’t really slept in for years. (Kent went first. He knows that. And he’s happy for him, for the realisation of a talent that had given Jack’s an edge. And he also knows that underneath the happiness is a bitter jealousy that that could have been him and it’s not, because he’s here. And when he looks up Kent and his contract with the Aces, it invariably links to him and everything he threw away on a cocaine overdose that never happened. He’d cry but there aren’t tears left, so he sleeps and reads and sleeps a little more, and doesn’t talk to Parse because he doesn’t know what to say, not yet.)

After Kent there’s no one. Jack’s doctors and Jack’s therapists (more than one, it takes him a long time to find the one he’s happy to talk to, or it feels long, maybe it’s a normal amount of time, it’s not like Jack would know) all tell him he needs to focus on himself. His health is paramount. Once he’s on his feet again, he coaches peewee hockey and he finds he really enjoys that. There’s no pressure to perform with kids. They’re happy to be on the ice, and he’s happy (or happier, whichever) to be back out there, just to feel the glide of it solid and real beneath his feet. And they’re cute, he thinks, they remind him of himself, before. Before everything. Before the talent scouts and the pressure, when he could (almost) pretend he was just like everyone else. Before he was aware of his name, really, _consciously_ aware of it. It’s good, he can breathe.

And once he can breathe, he thinks maybe he can talk.

Kent says he’s sorry. It’s been months, and that’s the first thing Kent says. “I’m sorry, Zimms,” just like that. He doesn’t say what he’s sorry for, but Jack can guess. For not being there, maybe, and that’s stupid because no one else was there as much as Kent was. Sorry for taking the thing that should have been Jack’s and that they can never change now. (Should have been, Jack thinks, is reductive. Kent is good. He deserves this. He deserves better than the Aces, too, but that doesn’t matter now either.) Sorry for not trying harder, for pushing, and maybe, _maybe_ for the last few years.

Jack’s sorry for a lot of things, but the things he did with Kent (with their hearts and their mouths and their bodies) aren’t amongst them. He _is_ sorry for the pills, and for the beer, and for never telling Kent how he feels. How he felt. But he’s not sorry it happened.

Time and distance grow between them, though. They slide slowly into silence. It’s supposed to be healing time, but the distance feels like a trench. Jack watches Kent’s career sky rocket, and he stays in Montreal, 20 years old, with his parents, coaching peewee hockey and putting himself back together.

(There’s going to be a time when he does see Kent again. He’s going to be older and not necessarily wiser, but he’s going to be a lot more sober than he was back then, and he’s going to say no to Kent and actually mean it, and the encounter will leave him sick and shaking. It’s not all on Kent, but it’ll remind him they both have healing to do and things to say that they’ve put off for far too long. If emotions are geographic landmarks, their Niagra has definitely inched into Canadian territory in the intervening years. He’s going to see Kent, and Kent will remember how to push his buttons and Jack won’t kiss him back, not this time. Because there’s going to be someone else, and there’s more to life than the NHL (barely, maybe). He’ll see Kent again and remember the things he said when he was 16 and wrong and 18 and scared and the things he hasn’t said in all the years since and he’ll remember all of the things Kent knows about him and that he knows about Kent and Kent’s name will be a whisper on his lips that could find Kent’s again so easily. “Kenny,” and Kent’s impassioned, “Zimms,” and the feel of Kent’s thigh between his own and how hard his body is now and it’ll choke him until he pushes Kent away. Until Kent says every awful terrible thing that Jack already knows about himself, and about his life, and about everything he threw away, and he’ll leave Jack shaking and upside down and _scared_ again- He’ll see Kent, and it won’t fix anything, won’t reveal anything, but it’ll remind him why he was so terrified of this truth for so long. Except that this time, there’ll be reasons to push past the fear. Maybe.)

For now, though, he stays. He stays in Montreal. He heals and he grows and he’s going to be fine. He’s going to be okay. He doesn’t date, but he tracks who catches his attention, and he’s not so lost in himself that he can’t see his own patterns.

He doesn’t actively acknowledge it, and doesn’t want to act on it besides. But there are boys he watches on the ice, and they’re all smaller than he is, wiry and fast.

And usually blond.

*** 

For Jack, the knowledge that he’s- he’s not straight doesn’t come on like a lightbulb in a dark room. It’s not Kent’s mouth on his, or Kent’s body hard against his own. It’s more about collated experience. It’s more like a series of candles that roar into a brief inferno before the darkness consumes them again.

(If knowledge is a candle, Jack wonders if he’s the moth. How close can he get to the truth before he burns too?)

He knows _now_ , and that’s what matters. He knows, and he knows that that Kent knows, and he hopes that the heaviness of this secret that exists between them is enough to keep that between just them. He knows that his parents know, because they had to. Because he had to be honest, even when the words felt like spikes, as if every truth pushes him further away, as if every single inalienable part of himself is more disappointing than the last.

But between each flickering candle flame, Jack learns to accept a part of himself that he can’t change and doesn’t want to (is tired of trying to). He doesn’t have to advertise it, doesn’t have to rent that billboard that Kent joked about once. But he knows he can fall in love with men and still excel at hockey, and maybe, hopefully, one day, he can have both.

Until then, there’s a secret to be kept and a legend to earn, and unexpected friends that he might - slowly - learn to trust.


End file.
